THE “WHAT-THE-F**K-WAS-THAT?!” AWARD: SPIDER-MAN BITES A GUY’S HEAD OFF:

    Look, I really do try to stay positive in the column. I think a lot more good is done by pointing people toward what I think are good comics than by spewing venom about bad ones. And now that I’ve been actually writing comics myself (more on that in future weeks if you haven’t already heard), I’m all the more sensitive to the notion. I realize now more than ever that no one intentionally writes a bad comic book.

    But Spider-Man bit a guy’s head off.

    I’m going to say it again for emphasis.

    Spider-Man bit a guy’s head off. Has there ever been a creative team that seems to have so little of an idea what makes the character work? In the seemingly endless “THE OTHER: EVOLVE OR DIE” storyline, we’ve seen issue after issue of Spidey suffering from an unknown, practically undescribed disease, which is itself the worst, cheapest kind of unfulfilled tension, since we all know Peter Parker isn’t really going to die.

    Then writer Reggie Hudlin gives us what was supposed to be a heartwarming story of Peter sharing a family moment with Mary Jane and Aunt May – only he has May and MJ wearing old outdated suits of IRON MAN armor, so they can sneak into Latveria and use Dr. Doom’s time machine.

    I’m going to say that again for emphasis, too. Aunt May was flying around in Iron Man’s armor. Ay caramba.

    So the climax of the story came in a couple of recent issues by J. Michael Straczynski, in which Morlun, the mystical spider-eating bad guy from earlier in JMS’ AMAZING SPIDER-MAN run, shows up and attacks the now-weak and ailing Spidey, beating him mercilessly and – I kid you not – plucking out Spidey’s eyeball and eating it. Not to be satisfied with just that bit of pointless gore, the next issue finds Morlun attacking a hospitalized Spidey, only to find Spidey transformed into some sort of spider/human hybrid, who leaps on Morlun, pins him down with some sort of stingers that have extruded from his arms, and proceeds to eat Morlun’s head. And in case you’re thinking I’m misinterpreting the art, there’s a helpful caption:

    “…when the spider bites, when the spider feeds…it always starts at the head.”

    Yeah.

    Thank heaven for back issues.